Rumors, Pescado Podrido and Disinformation in Interwar Argentina

Abstract

Abstract This article identifies how and why Argentine political rumors were created, spread, and legitimized by government officials, military officers and the press in the interwar years. In that period, the practice of what we now call “fake news”—known as pescado podrido (rotten fish) in Argentina for it poisons the one who hears or repeats it—became more common and took on international proportions. In Argentina, a variety of forces drove the increase in disinformation, including political instability, the rising (and later the banning) of the majoritarian Radical Party, elite anxiety about the threat of communism, and a long-lasting nationalist fear about the integrity of borders. Authorities and right-wing politicians were inclined to see any anti-government actions as linked to international communism and, in some cases, imaginary Jewish conspiracies. The article offers two case studies: One refers to the anti-Radical Party rumors, especially those spread in the days immediately before and after the coup d’état in 1930; and the other to a more generalized atmosphere of anti-communist inspired rumors and fake news in the interwar period. This article is based on research in government archives and newspaper collections in Patagonian cities, Buenos Aires, and Washington, D.C. Argentine official sources included records from the Ministry of the Interior, the Gobernación del Neuquén, President Agustín P. Justo’s papers and recently declassified army and navy documents.